More Effective Use of Hydroclimatic Forecasts for Decision Making in Water

Time: 2016-06-08 15:00:00
From:

Academic Report on Jun.08

Report Topic: More Effective Use of Hydroclimatic Forecasts for Decision Making in Water Resources Planning and Management

Reporter: Prof. Ximing Cai, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Time: 15:00, Jun.08, 2016

Location: Academic hall of state key laboratory

The last decade has witnessed tremendous scientific and technological advances in our ability to forecast hydroclimatic variability and extremes, which are potentially useful to help operate and manage water resources systems aiming to larger reliability and efficiency. However, many forecasts are rarely effectively used in practice and there is little evidence of incorporating them in real-world decision making. One of the main barriers of the uptake of forecasts, which is often cited by studies, is related to forecast uncertainty; however, even reliable forecasts alone are not sufficient to ensure the expected response. In fact, water managers make decisions in a sophisticated setting, which is on one hand affected by uncertainty and on the other hand constrained by regulations and policies. Therefore, it is not only important to recognize the various key individual challenges, but also critical to understand the interdependencies among them in order to properly address the effective use of forecasts. This understanding is also essential to assess the expected value of forecasts information which is of high importance for decision makers prior to incorporating forecasts. This talk, building upon an extensive literature review of using forecasts in water resources and agricultural decision making, is to 1) address the key challenges limiting the uptake of forecast, 2) highlight the interdependency among different factors, and 3) summarize a series of relevant studies.